Heated Windscreen for a Landrover Defender

I bought myself a landrover Defender just before last winter & after having to scrape ice off the inside as well as the outside I thought I would invest in a heated windscreen.

The windscreen was installed professionally. I just had to do the electronics and after help from lr4x4 and especially this post this is what I have achieved.

Here is the circuit I have gone for.

I could have used the conventional landrover circuit but I find switching earth very confusing.

Why do you need a timer relay & a high current relay?

•  This is because the windscreen takes 30Amps and a timer relay is only designed for about 10Amps and the switch for less than that.

A simple switch from maplin would suffice but I fancied a proper landrover switch. The slight issue here is that the switch is designed to switch earth. Thankfully a clever gent from lr4x4 has suggested this mod and I can vouch that it works. You need to open up the switch carefully and cut one of the tracks.

Before the modification the terminals are :

     Pin 1 - from Timer Relay
     Pin 2 - Live from Dash Illumination
     Pin 3 - Not Used (but internally connected to Pin 4)
     Pin 4 - To Earth
    Pin 5 - Live from output side of Relay (to light the tell-tale LED)

Opening the switch is a little tricky. There are some catches which can be pushed in with a very fine screw driver and the switch pings in half if you push it apart with your thumbs.

After the modification the terminals are:

     Pin 1 - Live from fusebox
     Pin 2 - Live from Dash Illumination
    Pin 3 - To Earth
    Pin 4 - Switched Live Pulse to VWP relay
    Pin 5 - Live from output side of Relay (to light the tell-tale LED)

To wire up the switch you need a connector plug. These are hard to come by & the only supplier I could find was a ZZPLUG01 from Dingocraft. This needed a small amount of surgery with a stanley knife so perhaps I should have got the ZZPLUG02, but it is in and works.

The connections for the timer relay are:

     Terminal 1 - A momentary 12V from your switch, this starts the timed session
     Terminal 2 - Earth
     Terminal 3 - Fused 12V supply from battery, this is where your screen gets it power from.
     Terminal 4 - Ignition 12V. This is what makes the internals of your timer work
     Terminal 5 - Goes to positive terminal of your screen. 

The correct way to get the power to the switch & timer relay is to use a feed from the oil pressure switch but I have to confess I did not know where that was. The reason for using the oil pressure switch is to stop you using the windscreen without the engine running (to stop you getting a flat battery).

I cheated. The electric windows will only work with the ignition fully on so I took my feed from there, with the addition of a 5Amp fuse between the electric window feed and my circuits. It is obviously possible to turn the ignition to position 3 and not start the vehicle & then turn on the windscreen but who would be so daft.....Only time will tell!

Next up I will be fitting heated mirrors from mudstuff. The circuitry will be identical except that they do not need a feed direct from the battery as they only draw a couple of amps.

Significant Parts list:
    dash switch - part number: YUG000460LNF
    timer relay - part number: Ref:74350
    high current relay: maxi relay Ref: 268763
    dash switch connector

Creating & storing maps on your phone

I have an android phone & I have tried various mapping software applications.

My current favourite is Maverick. This is a great free mapping app with access to all sorts of mapping formats even 1:25,000 Ordnance survey maps for the UK.

The trouble most of these solutions is that the maps are requested on demand, so when you are up in the hills you can not get at the data and when you are abroad it will cost you a fortune.

The solution is to get the data before you need it. Most mapping apps store the requested maps as you view them so you can pan around while on wi-fi for the area you are interested in to view when you are up in the hills.

But what if you want maps for a large area. I am off to Spain soon and found it was taking an age to get the maps I wanted so I looked for an alternative solution.

I chose Mobac. This runs on your PC, downloading the maps and converting them to the mapping software of your choice. You select an area, the style of map and the map client software and away you go.

Things to look out for:

1. The more detailed (zoomed in) maps you choose the larger the data. Its pretty well exponential. Avoiding level 16 will save you loads of time & data.
2. Getting the data on to the phone is also a pain. Transferring 1000s of individual files takes an age. I tried the likes of FastCopy but they corrupted the URL of the USB mounted directory of the phone. I ended up zipping up folders of files, copying these to the phone and unzipping.
3. Connecting wifi'ly has made all the difference to data transfer. Much much faster than USB.

The mapping format I have chosen are the excellent OSM cycle map.

Combing maverick with the excellent Gpsies.com is proving excellent.

Freeing a stuck cassette on my road bike

The other day I wanted to replace the cassette on my road bike, the first time in 2.5 years - makes a change from the MTB which needs doing more than once a year.

Anyway, I undid the lockring & took the first two rings off.

The first shock I had was that the cassette & freehub all came off the wheel in one piece.

Oooops I thought, but it turns out that the freehub was supposed to come away. But what I could not do was get the remains of the cassette of the freehub. It was firmly stuck & no matter of subtle welly would get it to budge.

I took the wheel & cassette to the shop I had bought the new one from, Merlin in Chorley.

There the mechanic, did a great trick & free of charge. Thanks Merlin. Using two chain whips one in each direction with one on the outer (smallest) gear he gave them a little jiggle and off popped the first gear.

He then repeated the process until they were all off.

Turns out the cause is having a very lightweight (for that read soft) freehub, and the cassette had eaten into the splines like a key and locked itself on.